Get Ready ­ There's a Transition in the Church page 38 Battle Cry page 42 A World Split Apart page 44

Alexander I. Solzhenitsyn

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Editorial Introduction

by Stephen Court Greetings in the name of our great God and Saviour, Jesus Christ. I trust the battle progresses well on your front. Thanks for visiting JAC! If you are new, the front page (bottom left) contains links to the previous 25 issues, replete with stimulation, inspiration, and sometimes even confrontation. Enjoy. But the tradition continues with our new issue. The JAC Feature is FIVE BOOKS THAT HELPED SHAPE MY LIFE. What an exciting exercise this is! We get to crawl inside the heads and hearts of some bright lights of The Salvation Army in several territories of the world and find out a little bit about why they are like they are. For those statistically minded, there were a few authors mentioned by more than one contributor. Dutch Sheets, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and Phillip Yancey all received multiply notes (WHAT'S SO AMAZING ABOUT GRACE, INTERCESSORY PRAYER, and LIFE TOGETHER, were each chosen by two contrbutors). I found it interesting that two contributors shared two titles (and I know personally that there could have been at least one other duplication between these two warfighters). I also found it refreshing that the more veteran contributors tossed out several non-SA titles. Anyway, for those of you looking to prepare for your next reading binge, look no further. One contributor to the Feature noted that reading books remains the key factor for growth in spiritual growth. To stimulate such growth in JAC regulars, we've added a feature to armybarmy.com called Book Of The Fortnight. It highlights different ebooks that you are welcome to download and read for free. You are also provided opportunity to submit reviews. One exciting aspect of this feature is that online books include many excellent out-of-print classics that are now available to us all. Enjoy the reading and growth (for keeners who can't get enough JAC propaganda, feel free to drop in on our Captains' Blog that shows up on the main page of armybarmy.com nearly every day). But that's not all for this issue. Lieutenant Andrew Clark blows our compact theology by finding Jesus where you mightn't expect Him. Captain Stephen Poxon builds on his excellent writing reputation with more spiritual digestables. Commission Wesley Harris picks up his Battle Lines column with fluent and fluid pen. And Kathy Allan drops another exhortation bomb on us. And there is even more than that. But I will let you get right into the thick of it. May the words on the screen spur us all on to love and good deeds. May God be pleased with our lives and the changes they manifest influenced by these articles.

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Five Life Shaping Books JAC recently asked a number of people to describe five books that most helped shape their life. (beside the Bible of course!)

Feature Forum

Major Janet Munn

1. Beyond the Curse by Aida Besancon Spencer. This book is a biblical study of all the controversial passages in Scripture that have been used to keep women out of leadership and ministry in the Church. The author does a clear, powerful and convincing study of the original languages, cultures and contexts and applies interprets the author's intent with that understanding. It is a book that set me free. 2. Intercessory Prayer by Dutch Sheets Dutch Sheets analyzes the role of the believer in partnering in prayer, according to the Word of God, to accomplish God's will on the earth. This book has been a firestarter in my own heart, to pray aggressively, believing God absolutely desires to answer, and in fact has chosen to limit Himself, in partnership with the Body of Christ. This teaching is an anointed anti-dote to the &quot;whatever is going to happen will happen&quot; mindset -- that is a lie from the devil. 3. Life Together by Dietrich Bonhoeffer A revolutionary look at Christian community and the non-negotiable of close interaction and relationships with fellow believers. Bonhoeffer's spiritual authority and authenticity shout through this book. It left me greatly challenged in my individualistic tendencies. 4. The Writings of Catherine Booth The co-founder is as relevant and sharp today as ever. Her forceful communication and argument are inspiring, convincing, compelling, challenging. No wonder she has been a world changer. I re-visit her writings on Female Ministry consistently. 5. Healing by Francis MacNutt Francis MacNutt is a former Roman Catholic priest who realized quickly after his ordination, that the needs that confronted him, far exceeded his power to help. The Spirit of God enrolled him in the School of Healing, by direct tutoring from the Spirit, and with continual practical experience. His stories of great need, personal desperation and the power of God manifest, have been ongoing sources of encouragement for me to persevere in the healing ministry. Colonel Dennis Phillips The five books that have most of all shaped my life are:

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Genesis I Samuel Job John II Timothy But, I think the assignment was, &quot;other than the Bible&quot;, and from there I was challenged to restrict it to five, yet, here they are, and I present them in the chronological order in which they appeared in and impacted my life: 1. QUIET TALKS ON PRAYER (S. D. Gordon) This book was already old and dog-eared when it was handed to me during the year I was preparing to enter training (1959). S. D. Gordon introduced this young officerto-be to the wonder of prayer, and his writings prompted me to take the first steps in a life-long pilgrimage (which I am still on) in pursuit of a holy prayer-relationship with God. Remember, I was getting ready for cadetship, that necessary step to becoming an officer, and it was one of those times in my life when I was particularly sensitive to spiritual things. So, my 20-year-old mind took it quite seriously and literally when I read, &quot;For if a man is to pray right, he must first be right in his motives and life.&quot; During that time, I drew up my first &quot;Ten Most Wanted&quot; list of souls to be saved, most of them my own family, and although it took 33 years for one of my brothers to come to Christ, every one of those ten people came to the Lord, and I attribute my quantum leap of faith in prayer to the detailed instruction given in this text. 2. CELEBRATION OF DISCIPLINE (Richard Foster) In 1980, while serving as territorial youth secretary, I was invited to lead the Asbury College Salvation Army Student Fellowship Retreat and was advised by the Student Fellowship President, Kenneth Luyk (now training principal in the USA Southern Territory) that the theme of the retreat would be based on this book. Reading it changed my life. Through all the years of my youth and early officership, I heard senior officers speak of the impact Brengle's books had had on them, and I longed for such a spiritualliterary experience. It came with the reading of Celebration of Discipline. The first time, it took me a year to read its 200 pages because I was driven to process each chapter (sometimes one paragraph at a time) into my life. As with a great novel, my full attention was piqued upon reading the first page: &quot;We must not be led to believe that the Disciplines are only for spiritual giants and hence beyond our reach, or only for contemplatives who devote all their time to prayer and medication. Far from it. God intends the Disciplines of the spiritual life to be for ordinary human beings: people who have jobs, who care for children, who wash dishes and mow lawns. In fact, the Disciplines are best exercised in the midst of our relationships with our husband or wife, our brothers and sisters, our friends and neighbors.&quot; &quot;Wow&quot;, I said to myself. &quot;This book is for me&quot;. And although each chapter is overwhelmingly rich and worthy of mention, I take time (space) here to draw attention

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only to Chapter 11, &quot;The Discipline of Worship&quot;. Dr. Foster's recommendations for one to prepare for worship have made Sunday mornings rich and precious for this itinerant who has worshipped everywhere from Pasadena Tabernacle to the distant mountains of Haiti. Meaningful worship has little to do with how good the preacher is or how large the congregation may be. It's all about one's preparation to meet with God and be changed by the very essence of His presence. 3. LEAP OVER A WALL (Eugene H. Peterson) If the most creative novelists of the 20th/21st Centuries were brought together, they could not come close to conceiving a plot as wild, imaginative, daring, adventuresome, sexy, emotional and dramatic as the story of David, and Eugene Peterson masterfully draws out all of the above in Leap Over a Wall. I have referred often to Chapter Two in which Mr. Peterson vividly re-tells the story of David's selection to be king. He was the least of the 8 brothers. (Maybe I identified too strongly here in that I, too, was &quot;the least of 8 children&quot; - 6 of whom were brothers, but I relished the picture of David having been virtually forgotten and overlooked by everyone except God.) The House of David, yes the one Jesus was prophesied to rule over, is to be honored and held in holy regard; yet, we find in King David many of the same life-situations we also face, though centuries apart. Though chosen by God and set apart for Kingly responsibilities, David demonstrated an ordinariness that emboldens us &quot;ordinarians&quot; to realize a stumble does not have to mean a fall, and even a fall does not have to mean one is down forever. We learn from David that it isn't what we do for God, but what God does for us. God's providence prevails. 4. WHAT'S SO AMAZING ABOUT GRACE (Philip Yancey) God's timing is perfect, and He placed this book in my hands at the very time in my life when I needed it the most. Without naming the time or the place, let it suffice to say I needed to learn how to forgive. And while Philip Yancey &quot;covers the waterfront&quot; on the subject of Grace, it was the chapters on forgiveness that I read and re-read (and am still reading) that delivered liberation to my conflicted soul. Yes, I had been hurt - terribly so - by people who should have known better. And my human response was to somehow get even, but there is nothing in the life of Jesus or the entire New Testament to justify such behavior. But how does one forgive when one is not even asked for forgiveness. How does one forgive when justice has been swept aside and innuendo and fact-less slander prevail? Ah, that was when, like having a spiritual massage, I read, &quot;Forgiveness is achingly difficult, and long after you've forgiven, the wound lives on.&quot; (Note: I've never had a massage, but I understand that while a massage can make one feel good eventually, there is a lot of pain in the process.) &quot;Forgiveness is an unnatural act&quot;, says Yancey for the sinful and carnal nature within us seeks recompense and revenge. But Jesus spent more time in the brief &quot;Lord's Prayer&quot; on the subject of forgiveness than anything else. &quot;Forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us.&quot; How about this for a translation, &quot;Lord, I want you to forgive me the same way I have forgiven others&quot;. Okay, I understand the dynamics, but how does one become a forgiving person?

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Well, you have to read the other chapters to get your arms around God's grace, which, as we've often said, is sufficient. 5. PRAYER, FINDING THE HEART'S TRUE HOME (Richard Foster) This book came to me just before we moved to the Caribbean Territory in 1998. Again, God's timing was perfect, for one discovers a whole new relationship with God while serving on the mission field. While serving in the USA, prayer was certainly good, helpful and inspirational, but on the mission field, prayer becomes one's lifeline, an absolute necessity to cope and survive. At one point, Dr. Foster explains the &quot;Selah&quot; so often seen in the Psalms. It is meant as a signal for a meditative interlude. Well, reading this book required many &quot;Selah's&quot;, for one must not just read through it. One must pause and ponder every point and each paragraph. I promise, this book will take you to places of prayer you have never imagined. In fact, just writing about it here, I am encouraged to pick it up yet once again and return home to the heart of God.

Commissioner Wesley Harris

The hardest part of responding to the JAC editor's request is in making a choice of only five books which have meant much to me and seeing so many other volumes on my shelves reproaching me on account of their being overlooked! From no fewer than fifty books on preaching from which I have at least learnt how much more I need to learn, I would select Heralds of God by J. S. Stewart. The chapter headings indicate the substance of a book which had a profound impact on me as a young officer. They are, `The preacher's world', `The Preacher's theme`, `The Preacher's study`, `The Preacher's technique' and `The Preacher's inner life'. More than twenty years after obtaining the book I felt a strong urge to write and tell its author how much it had meant to me. In response he sent a handwritten letter to say how my note had cheered him in his retirement. I treasure that letter from one of the greatest preachers of the 20th century. Another book which has long had an honoured place on the shelves which have accompanied me around the world is The House of my Pilgrimage by my boyhood hero and my encourager when I was a corps officer, General Albert Orsborn. He was an orator in the grand style now somewhat out of fashion but many of my generation were blessed and inspired by his preaching as well as by the enduring legacy of his songs. I particularly enjoyed the book's earlier chapters telling of early struggles, song writing and contacts with some of the early leaders of the Army. I have long made a practice of pencilling my own indices at the back of my books and transposing the entries into a filing system for ready reference. Among the books thus marked would be a few by Stephen Covey and John C. Maxwell including the latter's Developing the leaders around you. His emphasis on multiplying leaders and not just attracting followers is something to be noted.

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Philip Yancey is a currently popular author described by Professor J. I. Packer as `a journalist, a gadfly and a prophet rolled into one'. His, What's so amazing about grace can certainly provoke new thoughts about old truths and I for one need books that can do that. I get the impression that some Salvationists think that all good books come from outside the Army. That is not true although with our Movement unfortunately producing fewer books than at other times in our history the perception is understandable. However, some good books by Army writers are still coming off the presses. The huge circulation of volumes by Henry Gariepy has been very encouraging. Then I would mention, Who are these Salvationists by Shaw Clifton, which carries the weight of true scholarship without being an unduly heavy read. It should be required study for those who imagine that any change in the Army would be for the best. This book has some sign posts we would do well to consult. Captain Danielle Strickland Obviously this is a hard question to answer. I have included five books (besides the Bible) that have deeply impacted my life. For all of them there are ten others that have helped shape me. I love to read and perhaps above all other influences reading remains the way that I acquire knowledge that changes me. I love that God created words. Chasing the Dragon: the life story of Jackie Pullinger. I read this book as a new Christian and it inspired me to go the distance with God. It also created a hunger to see the hand of God at work in supernatural ways in my ministry. This booked shaped me into a person sold out to mission, wanting to work for and among the poor, and it gave me a thirst for God's supernatural power. No Future Without Forgiveness: by Bishop Tutu. This book both amazed and inspired me. It helped me to understand the power of forgiveness not just on a personal level, but also on a national one. It gave me a glimpse into the work that God is doing on an international level in our world - during my lifetime. It also helped me to see light at the end of the tunnel in a world that will be cleaning up the debris of racial hatred and civil wars for years to come. This book continues to challenge and shape my thoughts on the future of our world. Pope John Paul II: the biography, by Tad Szulc. The story of Pope John Paul's life rocked my world, not to mention my prejudices. As the strong story of faith and surrender to God unfolded I was challenged to live a life that would be as committed and sold-out to the gospel. I was convicted of a deep prejudice towards Catholicism that I didn't even know existed. This book was instrumental in changing my mind and exposing the places in my heart that needed to be free. This also helped me appreciate the deep faith of Catholicism and her place in the world - and our place

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along with her. I found my love for the bride deepen and widen to embrace rather than exclude my Catholic brothers and sisters. Intercessory Prayer, by Dutch Sheets. Before this book I was very unclear about Intercession. I was often quite perplexed about what people were doing when they prayed fervently (including wailing and travail). I struggled within the Word to get a grasp of what intercessory prayer meant and how I could enter the party. This book changed that. It gave me a practical and Biblical explanation of Intercessory Prayerthe importance of it and the form of it and the freedom of it all. It inspired me to not only pray but also to equip, mobilize, and unleash the prayer warriors that I knew. This has impacted my heart and hanged my ministry for the better. Life Together, by Bonhoeffer. The classic on community. This book (along with others by Tom Sine who I would say is the contemporary classic on community) has shaped my life in major ways. Bonhoeffer challenged by core belief that my 'devotions' had to be done in isolation from anyone else... now I understand that my time with God can be both individual and communal. I now spend my morning devotions reading and praying with my family as a unit of one together before God. Both Bonhoeffer and Tom Sine have challenged me to live the Gospel out in rough, and poor neighbourhoods, to live the opposite of the world, to challenge the statusquo. Bonhoeffer did it by his words but also his life (going back into the fire of Nazism) and Tom Sine by his practical examples in his books (The Mustard Seed Conspiracy, and Mustard Seed versus McWorld). Both have brought me to a place today where I live in an inner city, in order to live out the Gospel and see His Kingdom come. Commissioner Shaw Clifton Selecting only five books was quite a problem. I list my representative choices in publication date order. The first is a collection of Anglican prayers, The Priest's Prayer Book compiled in 1921 by R.F. Littledale and J. Edward Vaux. It was published by Longmans, Green and Co., London. I picked it up second hand in Bromley, England in March 1992 since when it has been a source of real blessing to me, for I make much use in my private devotional life of the prayers of others. The section on &quot;Private Prayers for Bishops&quot; was especially meaningful during my five years as a Divisional Commander, and since. Another section, &quot;Notes on the Practice of Holiness&quot;, remains timeless with its simple, direct insights. This volume is a delight to handle, with its smooth calf leather binding and gold leaf pages. It also gives off that heady aroma so beloved of second hand book store junkies. The second is Extracts From General Booth's Journal 1921-22, published by Salvationist Publishing and Supplies Ltd., London, in 1925. Reading these daily journal entries by Bramwell Booth has brought me into contact with a holy mind, a

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thoughtful, intelligent, visionary Army leader, and a deeply principled, passionate man of God. The book came into my possession when Lt. Colonel Ethne Flintoff, then the Social Secretary in Pakistan but now leading the work in Bangladesh, gave it to me as a Christmas gift in Lahore in 1998. It is one of my most treasured books. It is revisited often. Number three is a collection of First World War poetry by the great G.A. Studdert Kennedy entitled The Unutterable Beauty (Hodder and Stoughton, London, 1927). In these pages I find pathos, anguish of heart and soul, earthy eloquence and sometimes unbearable poignancy. It came into my hands in Worthing, England in 1986 and forms part of a small, but prized, collection of war poetry volumes on my shelves. Book four may seem to some a surprising choice. It is the Army's Handbook of Doctrine published in 1940 by International Headquarters, London. Though written five years before my birth, it resonates with me still. It was when reading Chapter X on &quot;Entire Sanctification&quot; that I was led into the blessing of a clean heart. This happened some years ago on an early morning commuter train going from Romford, Essex into London's Liverpool Street Station. I felt as though cocooned from my fellow passengers, and when they alighted I could hardly get to my feet in the empty train, such was the Lord's silent, invisible but unmistakable embrace. At the time I was serving at IHQ as the Legal and Parliamentary Adviser. This 1940 edition of the Handbook represents Army literature at it best, written when we still knew how to write for a verdict in the heart, even in our teaching and instructional material. Finally, the fifth volume is Jim Garrison's From Hiroshima to Harrisberg ­ The Unholy Alliance (SCM Press Ltd., London, 1980). It opened my eyes as never before to the folly and waste of war. All that human energy, creativity, genius and funding poured into weapons of mass destruction in America, and eventually elsewhere, with millions still without food, shelter, clothing, eduction or housing. Something is wrong deep in the human soul. Garrison's account of the coming of these weapons engendered in me a deep hatred of war, not such as to make me a pacifist outright but sufficient to take me to the very brink of that courageous outlook. &quot;We lay all carnal weapons down to take the shining sword.&quot; How heartily, but thoughtlessly, we sometimes sing Catherine Baird's anti-war anthem (SA Song Book1986, Song 705). Captain Stephen Court One of the joys of being the editor is that I can make up neat features like this one. Another of the joys is being able to succumb to the temptation to jump into the fray with my own two cents' worth! After reading the submissions, I couldn't resist. I've read a bunch of the books included by these greathearts commended above. But I am happy to say that I've got a fresh list! While I've benefited by 20th century

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writers (such as Ravi Zacharias, Commissioner Ed Read, Peter Wagner, Jack Deere, Major Chick Yuill, and Charles Colson), I've chosen books by my heroes. In 1777, John Wesley wrote an apologetic of his doctrine of holiness called A PLAIN ACCOUNT OF CHRISTIAN PERFECTION. He took the high road in the extremely charged debate of the day, allowing John Fletcher to scale the polemical heights in his CHECKS TO ANTINOMIANISM. His simple `question and answer' format was imitated by General William Booth in Booth's potent little 1903 book, THE DOCTRINES OF THE SALVATION ARMY (subtitled, &quot;Prepared for the use of Cadets in Training For Officership&quot;). Wesley patiently answered every critic's question, every skeptic's doubt, and every cynic's disparagement with historically documented explanation of this Biblical doctrine. Now, A PLAIN ACCOUNT stands in for Fletcher's CHECKS, and for Samuel Logan Brengle's practical guides, especially HELPS TO HOLINESS (a book I carried along with my Bible on a bicycle to our neighbourhood park, where I sat, determined not to leave until I experienced the holiness described therein). A PLAIN ACCOUNT is precious not only as a defence but as a promise of what is possible. The year after Wesley was promoted to Glory was born a man who would walk in his huge shoes. Across the ocean, Charles Finney stoked the fires of revival through the eastern United States. His preaching was so hardcore and so manifestly accompanied by the power of God that multitudes were transformed and cities were turned upside down. His LECTURES ON REVIVALS OF RELIGION (1835) is an account of the preaching that changed a nation. The sister volume is the stubbornly named, AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY BY THE REVEREND CHARLES G. FINNEY, 17921875 (1876). Together they tell a divine story that rips the placid satisfaction right out of you. It wasn't two years after Finney was promoted to Glory that Catherine and William Booth made a name change that has changed the world. While John Wesley was the grandfather of The Salvation Army and Finney was dubbed `the Presbyterian Salvationist' by the Booths themselves, my next choice, PAPERS ON AGGRESSIVE CHRISTIANITY, was by the Army Mother herself (I'm hesitant to use that term, as she was the General and the Founder, too, but she is the only one who was the Mother). I could have chosen any of a few books by Booth. They are merely collections of her preaching. They are merely fire on paper! Flames flick from her words off the page to practically lick your clothes. Each sermon oozes spiritual authority. Almost every paragraph shouts out to you with the urgency of the war. This hero makes no concessions, no compromises, and no political `correctitudes'. She put (and continues to put) a holy fear in me of the kind that doesn't cause cowering and retreat but impels total exertion to spread the dread. This helped shaped my life- I named a cyber journal after it (JAC) and an annual conference (ACC- Aggressive Christianity Councils). Catherine Booth was promoted to Glory in 1890. Not coincidently, Commissioner George Scott Railton was excommunicated from the halls of primitive salvationist

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power in the same year (was it coincidental that this was the year of the death of primitive salvationism?). While not famous as an author, GSR battled as effectively with the pen as he did with the Bible. Backing up every page of HEATHEN ENGLAND was a life of unleashed resolve that GSR modeled for the world. My buddy called me this winter from training college to get suggestions for references. I recommended HEATHEN ENGLAND and TWENTY-ONE YEARS' SALVATION ARMY. He emailed a week later noting that my name was the last one written in the CFOT borrowing cards (And I've been an officer for ten years!). And that is tragic, because the book is literally revolutionary, recounting, as it does, contemporary history of the primitive salvationist war. The stuff he was writing was happening outside his window. The heroics that lace these pages are enough to gouge a hole in your casual, comfortable Christianity and leave in its place a wrenching hunger for the guts to live and fight for death and glory as our 19th century comrades did, and for the God of Railton to show up again today. Raliton outlived William Booth by a year. Booth has yet to get his due as an author. He wrote some unknown classics such as SERGEANT-MAJOR DO-YOUR-BEST, SEVEN SPIRITS: Or, What I Tell My Officers, HOW TO PREACH, PURITY OF HEART, all less famous than IN DARKEST ENGLAND AND THE WAY OUT. But my last choice is VISIONS. It is a collection of visions Booth had, the most renowned being `Who Cares?' Not only is VISIONS eloquent, it persuasively depicts the divine. Booth doesn't settle with capturing your imagination- he grips it with a stranglehold. The undercurrent is that Booth is all about the prophetic. He hears from God and conveys the message to us. Most of us have neglected this reality in our salvationism (Catherine prophesied that this movement shall inaugurate the great final conquest of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ). We can more easily marginalize modern classics by Rick Joyner like FINAL QUEST and THE CALL. But Joyner lines up right behind Booth's VISIONS for prophetic impact. And while I love the visions and the writing, I embrace the Army's experience and calling with the prophetic.

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Lt. Andrew Clark Encountering the sacramental poor. Cadoggan Square is the financial heart of Scotland's second city, Glasgow. Millions are traded, earned and lost in the towering buildings of glass and stone. Daylight brings high powered business men, devoted secretaries, and hopeful officer juniors. The night brings a different scenario. As the sun sets behind the glass towers and their inhabitants catch their trains, something happens. The traffic is still busy, the streets are still filled but millions are not the aim now, just enough to buy the next fix will do. Whether it is the next fix of sexual pleasure or of some class of drug, the pursuit kicks in. This scene observed quietly is overwhelming. What produces thirst and pursuit of quick fix pleasures? Why are people aiming so low with their lives? Of course, I have my answer to that question ready made. Of course, it is the lack of Jesus in their lives that means they are still thirsting so observing quietly is not an option. Yet, as we moved into the area to introduce Jesus, we indeed found that he was there in power already. Moreover, the Jesus that we had hoped to help others encounter encountered us so powerfully. Each week we feed God. Jesus turns up disguised as &quot;Jimmy with the hat.&quot; In the form of Hughie ­ Glasgow's soup run bouncer. In the form of Leah (also known as Clair or Fiona or Jane or Margaret) who is not saving for a fix but for her unborn baby as she satisfies the needs of men who use her. Each week as our team gathers, I stand there and fill plastic cups with hot soup, I tremble in fear as I serve the King of Kings. He says to me through the prostitute &quot;I don't know what I'd do with out you.&quot; He says through the bag lady &quot;thank you for your love and time.&quot; He says through the bleary eyed crack addict &quot;thanks for feeding me.&quot; And I say, &quot;No, the privilege is truly mine.&quot; I have attended grand occasions with flags flying and soldiers and generals praising. I have prayed with the saints and sung with the songsters. Yet no more powerfully have I encountered God than through his sacramental poor. I know that when Jesus asks, &quot;did you clothe me and feed me&quot; I can say yes my Lord. I am almost content to let them remain poor as they are out of selfishness of the blessing that they bring me, but the poor need to find that the Kingdom of Heaven is truly theirs. They inherit the Kingdom by their own encounter of Jesus. I hope that encounter is through me and others like me, for I, myself, am poor. Impoverished only inasmuch as I still need Jesus more and more. We have had victories. God has produced prince and princesses, but the Royal family is not yet big enough in the opinion of King of Kings!

Feeding God

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Feeding God ­ Perhaps the next time to encounter the poor, you will be brave enough to hear Jesus echo &quot;are you going to feed me?&quot; Lieutenant Andrew Clark Dennistoun Corps, West Scotland Division.

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A Second Incarnation

Captain Stephen Poxon BIBLE READING: John 14:1-17 (New English Bible). TEXT: Verses 16 &amp; 17: &quot;...I will ask the Father, and he will give you another to be your Advocate, who will be with you for ever - the Spirit of truth. The world cannot receive him, because the world neither sees nor knows him; but you know him, because he dwells with you and is* in you&quot; (*some witnesses read shall be). We are all familiar with the gospel accounts of what we might call The First Incarnation (Matthew 1:18-2:6, Luke 1:26-2:20; John 1:1-15) - that spectacular and yet immensely humble occasion on which, as John records it, in a phrase which has become a classic of the Church, &quot;...the Word became flesh...&quot; (John 1:14, N.E.B.). That is to say, God, in the form of Jesus Christ, became a human being, being made, as Paul records it in Philippians 2:7 &amp; 8 (N.I.V.), &quot;...in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man...&quot; The world of football was stunned recently, to learn of the sudden and unexpected death of Marc-Vivien Foe, who collapsed and died at the age of 28 whilst playing an international match for Cameroon. Amongst the many tributes that flowed following Foe's death was one from a football coach under whose care Foe had blossomed into a player of international quality. The coach was quoted as praising Foe's skills, but also spoke highly of him as a human being, saying, &quot;He was the incarnation of life&quot; (B.B.C. Ceefax, 26/6/03). In Foe's case, it was his enthusiasm and infectious laughter that led to such a tribute. It was easy for his football coach to say such a thing of him, for Foe couldn't help but express his personality in a way that naturally endeared him to others, earning praise and high regard even from his opponents and rivals. It will be the life within us that will determine the impact we have upon other people as Christians. It will be the life within us that will determine our reputation. One of the newer trends emerging from America, according to the San Jose Mercury News, is that people in California are trying to achieve immortality by having a website address inscribed on their tombstones, the idea being that loved ones and friends of the dearly departed - and even morbidly curious strangers! - can log on to a website that commemorates the life and times of the deceased (paraphrased from Spicing up your Speaking, compiled by Simon Coupland, Monarch Books). Most human beings hope to have a good reputation, to be thought well of, and fondly remembered, but there is a limit to what we are able to do by ourselves. Only the life of the Holy Spirit within us - The Second Incarnation of Jesus, as it were - can begin to produce the character that God is looking for. Paul writes in Romans 8:29 (N.E.B.) that it is God's plan and intention that we should become more and more like Jesus; &quot;For God knew his own before they ever were, and also ordained that they should be

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shaped to the likeness of his Son...&quot; The wonderful truth is, not only does God know each of us, he has a plan for each of us, and paramount in that plan is for the life of God the Spirit within each of us to cause us to be increasingly like Jesus, who is our example and role model. In the reading from John's gospel, we are told that followers of Jesus have been granted the gift of the Holy Spirit within them; &quot;...he dwells with you and is in you&quot; (John 14:17, N.E.B.). This is something to be claimed by faith, taking Jesus at his word, and trusting in what the Bible records as fact. Paul supports this idea when he writes in 1 Corinthians 3:16 (N.E.B.), &quot;Surely you know that you are God's temple, where the Spirit of God dwells&quot;. If we have at some time made a conscious, deliberate decision to follow Jesus, then the promise is that his Spirit has been imparted to us, within us - the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of God, the Spirit of Jesus (Acts 16:7). The extent to which we realise his presence within our lives, however, depends upon the extent to which we give him permission to guide us and lead us. Owen L. Ojola, writing in The Officer magazine dated July/August 2003, comments; &quot;A man was trying to let his house. He was showing the new prospective tenant through. He was very pleased with the place until he came to a locked room and the owner said, `Oh, I can't let you in there.' `Why not?' `Well, you see I have a tiger in that room and I have to keep him tied up.' `Well thanks,' the man said, `but I don't think I will take the place.' Many of us who love the Lord have a secret room where we have locked away some secret sin, so small we don't take much notice of it. We may have tried to kick it out a number of times, but it crawls back again, to our secret sorrow.&quot; What we might refer to as The Second Incarnation occurs when the Holy Spirit comes to indwell us. The First Incarnation, 2,000 years ago in Bethlehem, was a Universal Incarnation, whereby God the Son entered the life of Planet Earth in the form of a baby, coming into, and unto, the world at large. The Second Incarnation is much more personal and individual, whereby God the Spirit enters the lives of those who will give him access. We can choose to experience The Second Incarnation in part, or in full, for God is (remarkably!) gracious enough to allow that, even though it grieves him when we choose not to allow the Holy Spirit access to every room in the house, so to speak. The marvellous thing is, even though we struggle to allow The Second Incarnation to take hold of us fully, and even though we are all too often reluctant to resign all the pleasures of sin (see SASB 357), God (Emmanuel) is with us, and remains with us, even - or perhaps especially - in our times of conflict and turmoil. Thankfully, God does not give up on us just because we don't always want to go his way. Paradoxically, it seems the more we wrestle with sin, even if sometimes the wrestling is self-inflicted, the tighter his loving hold becomes, whereas we might expect rejection and dismissal. Often, I have reflected upon the testimony of Songster Leader Roland Hills of Harpenden Corps, U.K.T., who frequently refers to S.A.S.B. 621 when he tells his story; &quot;O love that wilt not let me go&quot; by George

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Matheson. Commissioner Shaw Clifton, in his book Who Are These Salvationists? puts it well in a paragraph he has entitled Perpetual Struggle; &quot;Our increased sensitivity to sin and the intensified pull of temptation upon the newly born-again believer can make the struggle for spiritual survival seem more difficult than ever (here Shaw Clifton includes a note referring the reader to Romans 8:1-13). but God will hold on to His children, gently increasing our capacity to please Him. In doctrinal language this is called sanctification...&quot; (Who Are These Salvationists? Crest Books, p.119). In the book How I Pray (Edited by John Wilkins, Dartman, Longman &amp; Todd), Sir David Goodall, British High Commissioner to India from 1987 - 1991, writes about how what Shaw Clifton calls `the struggle for spiritual survival' affects his prayer life; &quot;If prayer is `the raising up of the mind and heart to God', then the thoughts which fill the mind and heart must be raised up too, even if they are perverse or malign. When my will is in conflict with what I believe to be God's will, sometimes the conflict is so deep that I cannot even say with sincerity, `Bend my heart to your will, O God'; but at least I can show him the conflict; perhaps if I cannot bring myself to ask him to change my will, I can at least tell him that I would like to want to ask him to do so - but just cannot.&quot; In our own strength, we cannot change ourselves enough. Thankfully, though, as Commissioner Clifton reminds us, &quot;...God will hold on to His children, gently increasing our capacity to please Him&quot;. His love is such that he will not let us go. That being the case, it behoves us each to pray for The Second Incarnation to become increasingly real in our daily experience of God. We are dependent upon God to breathe upon us with his Holy Spirit. Our first parent, Adam, was dependant upon God to breathe into his nostrils the breath of life (cf. Genesis 2:7). The disciples of Jesus were dependant upon him to breath out the Holy Spirit upon them (cf. John 20:22). We too are dependent upon the Incarnation of the Spirit of Jesus within us as we continue in our pilgrimage. And so we pray, borrowing our prayers from Helps to Worship, compiled by The Venerable Charles T. Boyd and The Rev'd. H.G. Meara (A.R. Mowbray &amp; Co.); &quot;Come, O Holy Ghost, into my heart. give me strength to fight this day against the evil one, and to resist my besetting sin.&quot; &quot;O God, forasmuch as without Thee I am not able to please Thee; mercifully grant that Thy Holy Spirit may in all things direct and rule my heart; through Jesus Christ our Lord.&quot;

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&quot;O Lord, I am now in Thy presence; help me by Thy Holy Spirit, that I may be ready to offer the sacrifice of praise, and to hear Thy holy Word. Guard my mind from wandering thoughts and my body from irreverent actions, and make my service acceptable to Thee; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.&quot;

Commissioner Wesley Harris WILLIAM BOOTH did not invent the idea of being soldiers in the army of the Lord. It came right out of the pages of the Bible. When the Israelites went into battle with some of their warlike neighbours they saw themselves as fighting for Jehovah. God's soldiers were people like Deborah and David who triumphed by force of arms. In the New Testament the concept of the holy war against evil became spiritualised. The weapons were not those of the world (2 Corinthians 10.4) and the struggle was not against flesh and blood but against the spiritual forces of evil' (Ephesians 6.12). For the Apostle Paul the image of God's soldier may have been strengthened by the ubiquitous sight of Roman troops. With their standards the legions would march along the roads, sunlight glinting on armour. In some ways Roman soldiers were romantic figures to be admired as well as feared. They certainly could not be ignored. Paul had personal contact with the centurion Julius on his journey to Rome and doubtless there would have been soldiers guarding him during his imprisonment. Small wonder then that the journalist in Paul laid hold of the image of the soldier and enlisted it in the service of his Lord. The same sanctified opportunism possessed Elijah Cadman in 1877 when he was in charge of the Christian Mission at Whitby in the north of England. War and rumours of war were making headlines and there was the possibility of England becoming embroiled. Cadman prepared posters announcing, `War! War! War in Whitby. Wanted 2,000 men and women to join the hallelujah army'. He was ahead of developments for the next year the Christian Mission was renamed The Salvation Army - a change which gave new focus and added impetus to the work. Spiritual warfare became the order of the day. William Booth said that in building The Salvation Army he learnt more from the military than from the historic churches. That could be a clue for the Army today. Certainly the announcement of the opening of a `War College' in Vancouver should help focus attention on concepts fundamental for our Movement. Our history may well provide clues about our destiny. From the beginning our work has been assisted by folk who have not been soldiers and that is still the case. For example, there are advisory board members who can help enormously. Then there are valued adherents who share fellowship with us. (As a bit of a word fancier I might prefer the term associates, but that is by the way).

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However, every effort should be made to avoid eroding the concept of soldiership. Rather there is need to focus upon it as the embodiment of a Salvationist's conviction, commitment and compassion. The primary need of an army is soldiers. No soldiers, no Army! Of course, we recognise the importance of having local officers and officers but, with due respect, soldiership comes first. In its corporate wisdom the Army has decided that at a certain age officers should retire. Mercifully, no one with an excess of reforming zeal, has suggested that soldiers should leave the ranks at a certain age, for there is no discharge in this war! Of course, soldiership may be expressed in various ways. As the old chorus put it, `We all have a part to play in the great salvation war'. The sick or elderly person who functions as a prayer warrior behind closed doors may be every bit as much on active service as the hale and hearty comrade who can beat the drum in the open-air, come wind or weather. Then again, the Salvationist is not only called upon to be God's soldier when in uniform on Sunday but when in mufti on Monday. Soldiership is an affair of the heart. Writing to Timothy, Paul gave a profile of the good soldier and made four points we should note... He said that he or she must be ready to endure hardness (2 Timothy 2.3). The battle will be too tough for spiritual wimps! Lucy Booth-Helberg wrote, If all were easy, if all were bright Where would the cross be, and where the fight? But in the hardness, God gives to you Chances of proving that you are true. In a rather lengthy piece an unknown author included the following, `I am not a baby, I do not need to be pampered, petted, primed up or pepped up. I am a soldier...I am a soldier in God's army and I'm marching claiming victory. I will not give up, nor turn around. Here I stand... a soldier.' I like that. Salvation Army periodicals carried the story of Paul in South America who, from the age of seven had been addicted to drugs and in his teens became a member of a gang. Then he started to attend Salvation Army meetings and was converted. The first Sunday Paul wore a shirt with `S' - for salvation - on the collar he met some members of his old gang. They feared that now he had changed his life-style he would divulge some of their secrets and they threatened to beat him up. Later, talking it over with the Army Captain Paul recognised that if the gang went for him he could run away, make a fight of it or - and this would be hard - he could do as Jesus did when he was attacked.

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Late that night there was a knock on the Captain's door. It was Paul, terribly bruised and covered in blood - and yet, very happy. &quot;I did it Captain' he said, `I did what Jesus did.' `But Paul, `what is that cut on your forehead?' he was asked. `It's a knife cut, Captain. They said that if I wanted to wear an `S' they'd put one on me that I would wear for ever. And they did!' Like his namesake, Paul the Salvationist will carry in his body the marks of the Lord Jesus. The Apostle Paul told Timothy that the good soldier should beware of entanglements as the King James Version puts it. Satan can use even apparently harmless things to draw us away from the service of Christ and many are the illustrations that could be cited from experience in the life of Army corps. But let me refer to Demas in the New Testament to whom there are only three brief references from which we could plot his downward spiritual graph. In Philemon 24 Paul spoke of Demas as his `fellow worker`. He enjoyed a position of privilege and confidence. Spiritually he was riding high. Then the second reference in Colossians 4.14 is simply, `and Demas'. We cannot be sure, but I wonder whether Paul was beginning to have some doubts about his young comrade Certainly, the last reference, in 2 Timothy 4.10, makes clear that his worst fears were well founded. With a sob in his voice, he says, `Demas, because he loved this world, has deserted me and has gone to Thessalonica'. Tradition relates that Demas took a job swinging incense in a pagan temple. What a come down! He may have had an excuse - backsliders usually do. But Paul gave the real reason. He loved the world. He had become entangled. In 2 Peter 2.20 the writer refers to those who having known the Lord have become entangled in the world sot that they are worse off than they were at the beginning. Shades of Demas, perhaps! Paul indicated that the good soldier of Jesus Christ will want to please his Lord. Some people live to please themselves. Some live to please their husbands or wives, their bosses or their friends and this may not be a bad thing. But over and above all else we are called to please Jesus Christ knowing that if he smiles it is not all that important if others frown. Paul told the people in Corinth that he had become their slave for Jesus' sake (2 Corinthians 4.5) In the same chapter he said that he was 'given over to death for Jesus' sake'. Perhaps Albert Mingay was inspired by Paul's testimony when he wrote, For Jesus' sake, this is my motivation, For Jesus' sake, who came to seek and save;

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All I can give is deeper dedication For Jesus' sake, who gave and gave and gave. Then in his profile of the good soldier of Jesus Paul made plain that he needed to be strong in the grace of the Lord - `Be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus'. George Duffield wrote, `The arm of flesh will fail you, Ye dare not trust your own'. In our own strength we are likely to fail and fall. Better people than us have done so and we need to know very clearly where strength may be found. There was a time when mutiny was threatened among Napoleon's personal guard. To meet it the emperor went to his palace and sat in a small room between two large halls. The soldiers were assembled in one hall and one by one were called into the presence of their leader. Nothing was said as each was grasped by the hand. Napoleon looked him full in the face and then the man went out into the other hall. The whole company of guards passed through the little room in this way and when all had personally been in the presence of their leader the threat of mutiny was over. The look and the handclasp had done their work. Similarly, as soldiers we too need to enter the holy place, look into the steady eyes of our Lord, clasp his nail pierced hand - and then go out to be his strong and faithful soldiers.

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by Peter Wagner edited by Chris Simpson and David Little Lessons in Evangelism and Spiritual Warfare from Argentina One of the most successful models of urban evangelism that I have recently been in contact with is taking place in Argentina. Throughout the history of Protestant missions to Latin America, Argentina has been one of the more resistant nations. With the exception of the Tommy Hicks crusade and its aftermath in the early 1950s, the evangelical movement in Argentina has been pretty lackadaisical. But this changed dramatically with the Falkland Islands war in 1982 when Argentina tried unsuccessfully to occupy the Malvinas Islands, as they call them. The British victory caused a radical change in Argentine social psychology. National pride, for which Argentines were internationally notorious, was severely damaged. The church had failed them, the military had failed them, Peronism had failed them - they were ready to try something new. The fact of the matter is that well before 1982 the basis for Argentine pride had severely eroded. Once the world's tenth strongest economic power and boasting a standard of life higher than that of southern Europe. Argentina was the jewel of South America, peaking during the reign of Juan Domingo Peron and his followers through the 1950s and 1960s. As his influence waned in the early 1970s, Peron linked up with a powerful occult practitioner, Jose Lopez Rega, known popularly as &quot;el brujo&quot; (the warlock). Lopez Rega served under Peron as social welfare minister, and after Peron's death in 1974 became the chief advisor to his wife, Isabel Peron, during her two years as president. He erected a public monument to witchcraft (since dismantled), and is said by many to have publicly cursed the nation when he lost power with the military coup of 1976. Spiritism, principally from Brazil, began to flood the nation. Under the military rulers 8,000 political suspects &quot;disappeared&quot; forever, the bodies of many recently being uncovered in mass graves. Once the tenth strongest economic power, Argentina now finds itself tenth from the bottom by some measurements. Little wonder the nation is ripe for the gospel message. True, in such a spiritual vacuum, any change is seen by many as a change for the better. The power of witchcraft continues to escalate. False cults such as Mormonism are experiencing rapid growth. A huge ornate Mormom temple dominates the highway leading from the Ezeiza airport to Buenos Aires. But with all this, the power of God is being manifested in extraordinary ways. Hector Gimenez The largest church is downtown Buenos Aires is pastored by Hector Gimenez, 33, an ex-drug addict and gunfighter. He started the church in 1983 and now leads a congregation of some 70,000. The official name of the church is The Miracles of Jesus Renewed Christian Church, but it more popularly carries the name of Gimenez's radio broadcast, &quot;Waves of Love and Peace.&quot; Their church home is a 2,500 seat theater in which they hold eight services daily, seven days of the week.

The Awesome Argentina Revival

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Gimenez himself preaches five services per day, a total of 35 different sermons per week. A study by a Polish sociologist estimates the attendance at 14,000 daily. I had the privilege of preaching to a packed house at the 8:00 p.m. service on a Tuesday night in April 1990, and saw more than a dozen profess salvation and fifty profess miraculous healing, numbers totally disproportionate to the usual results of my speaking. When we left just before 10:30 p.m., a new crowd had totally jammed the space between the theater door and the street, waiting to get in for the next service! Gimenez told me that a couple of weeks previously on Easter Sunday, they had rented the largest enclosed auditorium in the city, Luna Park, which seats 15,000. They needed three services to accommodate the 35,000 worshipers, and they baptized 3,200 by immersion in portable pools. Whether they set an intentional goal to exceed the number baptized in Jerusalem on Pentecost Gimenez did not say. Spiritual Warfare What is the secret behind such effective ministry among the urban masses? The answers to such a question must not be oversimplified. All church growth is a complex interweaving of sets of contextual factors, institutional factors and spiritual factors. Much of what is happening in Argentina can be explained by well-known contextual and institutional church growth principles. I do not believe, however, that they can adequately account for the sheer magnitude of the phenomena I am describing. My personal conclusion is that spiritual factors, particularly power evangelism and spiritual warfare, are paramount. I agree with Larry Lea who says, &quot;The devil's work is to blind the minds of men and women. It is our work to pray that the powers of darkness be pushed back from shrouding people's minds.&quot; Powerful intercessory prayer is the chief weapon of spiritual warfare on all levels. For instance, backstage in Hector Gimenez's service I saw three women interceding on their knees on the hardwood floor throughout the entire two-hour service. I was told there are usually more. I doubt that Gimenez would see the spiritual power he enjoys without these intercessors. Larry Lea adds, &quot;Until we do the prayer work necessary to defeat the forces of the enemy holding people in darkness, Satan's blinders will remain.&quot; One of today's most knowledgeable Argentine leaders is Edgardo Silvoso of Harvest Evangelism based in San Jose, California. Silvoso did a workshop at Lausanne II in Manila in 1989 on spiritual warfare in Argentina. There he said, &quot;If there is one dominant element that has emerged in the theology and methodology of evangelism in Argentina, I would say it is spiritual warfare. It is an awareness that the struggle is not against a political or a social system. Nor is it on behalf of those who are captives, but it is rather against the jail keepers, against the rulers, those in authority in the spiritual realm.&quot; Silvoso contends that understanding this allows Argentine evangelists to get to the root of the problem instead of dealing merely with symptoms. He suggests that the results seem to validate this approach. Eduardo Lorenzo

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The national director of Harvest Evangelism in Argentina is Eduardo Lorenzo, who also serves as pastor of the Adrogue Baptist Church. When I visited Adrogue, an upper-middle-class section of Buenos Aires, I saw a thriving church of 600, a new auditorium with seating expandable to 2,000 and a goal of filling it with church members by 1993. This is not a new church. It has been there for over 70 years, but never had more than 100 members until recently. When Lorenzo took the pastorate in 1974 he saw it grow from 70 to 250 in thirteen years through using standard church growth procedures. But in 1987 the current growth surge began and Lorenzo says, &quot;If we do not make 2,000 by 1993, it will be because we are not trying.&quot; What happened in 1987? Lorenzo explains that it took them several years to get to the root of the problem and to come to understand the spiritual dimensions of their evangelistic challenge. The process began in the early 1980s when Lorenzo cast a demon out of a woman without really understanding what he was doing. His training and background had not prepared him for such a ministry. At that time one of his church members went to the United States, learned about spiritual warfare and reported to the congregation. Lorenzo then sponsored two spiritual warfare seminars in his church, one led by Edward Murphy of Overseas Crusades and the other by John White, the Christian psychiatrist and author from Canada. Soon afterwards, the battle began in earnest. A new woman who professed Christ was soon discovered to be an undercover agent sent by the enemy. Demons manifested in church services. Satan was counterattacking. Lorenzo says &quot;Satan was happy if he could keep the little Baptist church on its merry-go-round. He had effectively blinded the minds of the unsaved in Adrogue to the gospel. Through the years several other churches had been planted in Adrogue, but ours was the only one which had survived. Now we ourselves were under direct attack.&quot; Through a prolonged process of prayer, ministry and discernment, Lorenzo and his leaders finally identified the chief prince over Adrogue. Sensing God's timing, they recruited a team of 35 to 40 church members who would spend Monday through Friday of a certain week in prayer and fasting. Then on the Friday night all 200 members joined together for strategic-level intercession. They took authority over the territorial spirit. At 11:45 p.m. they collectively felt something break in the spiritual realm. The spirit had left. The church began to grow. Until then virtually no one who resided in Adrogue itself had ever been converted. Now 40 percent of the church members are from Adrogue proper. The year of the victory was 1987. Carlos Annacondia After observing the ministry of Carlos Annacondia for several years, I am prepared to offer a hypothesis: Annacondia may well be the most effective citywide interdenominational crusade evangelist of all time. If this turns out to be only approximately true, his approach to winning the masses of the cities to Christ deserves close scrutiny.

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Annacondia was the committed Christian owner of a prosperous nuts and bolts factory in Quilmes on the outskirts of Buenos Aires when he was called into evangelistic ministry. It was probably no mere coincidence that the day he launched his first public crusade was the day the British sunk the Argentine battleship General Belgrano in the 1982 Falkland Islands war. He was 37 years old at the time. When I use the term &quot;effective evangelism&quot; I follow the lead of Donald McGavran and the Church Growth Movement in arguing that biblical evangelism involves bringing unbelievers to a simultaneous commitment to Christ and also to the body of Christ. Making disciples involves bringing men and women to faith in Jesus and into responsible membership in a local church. Carlos Annacondia is highly successful in seeing this happen. On a recent visit to Argentina I worked with pastors of four cities. Without any leading questions on my part, in each of the four cities I heard Christian leaders in a matter-of-fact way refer to recent trends in their cities as &quot;before Annacondia&quot; and &quot;after Annacondia&quot;. In more than 20 years of studying urban crusade evangelism I have never heard such consistent testimonials of one evangelist across the board. Single instances of effective evangelistic crusades such as Tommy Hicks in Buenos Aires and Stanley Mooneyham in Phnom Penh have been recorded. But Annacondia's ministry seems to be unique. Several pastors showed me new sanctuaries they had constructed to contain the growth after Annacondia's crusade in their city. One showed me a basketball stadium they had been leasing for six years. Another church now holds 17 services a week in five rented theaters. Another pastor reports &quot;a notable change of attitude among the people of our city as a result of Annacondia's ministry.&quot; What Is Different? What is Carlos Annacondia doing that other urban evangelists do not usually do? Annacondia has a great deal in common with traditional crusade evangelists. He preaches a simple gospel message, gives an invitation for people to come forward and receive Christ as their Lord and Savior, uses trained counselors to lead them to Christ and give them literature, takes their name and address and invites them to attend a local church. Like Billy Graham and Luis Palau, Annacondia secures a broad base of interdenominational support from pastors and other Christian leaders in the target area. Like Dwight Moody and Billy Sunday he has had no formal academic theological training. Like Reinhard Bonnke and T. L. Osborne he features miracles, healings and deliverance from evil spirits in his meetings. He is not the only one who preaches in the open air, conducts three-hour services, or has on-the-spot intercessors praying for the ministry. If I am not mistaken, the major difference is Carlos Annacondia's intentional, premeditated, high-energy approach to spiritual warfare.

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A permanent fixture of Annacondia's crusades is what has to be one of the most sophisticated and massive deliverance ministries anywhere. Under the direction of Pablo Botari, a wise, mature and gifted servant of God, literally hundreds of individuals are delivered from demons each of the 30 to 50 consecutive nights of a crusade. The 150-foot deliverance tent, erected behind the peaker's platform, is in operation from 8:00 p.m. to 4:00 a.m. each night. Scores of teams whom Botari has trained do the actual hands-on ministry. I have never observed a crusade evangelist who is as publicly aggressive in confronting evil spirits as Annacondia. With a high- volume, high-energy, prolonged challenge he actually taunts the spirits until they manifest in one way or another. To the uninitiated the scenario might appear to be total confusion. But to the skilled, experienced members of Annacondia's 31 crusade ministry teams, it is just another evening of power encounters in which the power of Jesus Christ over demonic forces is being displayed for all to see. Many miraculous healings occur, souls are saved, and so great is the spiritual power that unsuspecting pedestrians passing by the crusade meeting have been known to fall down under the power of the Holy Spirit. Pablo Prokopchuk A typical Annacondia crusade will have a radical influence on the philosophy of ministry of many cooperating local churches. A case in point is Pastor Pablo Prokopchuk of the Los Olivos Baptist Church in the city of La Plata. He told me that his church had been plateaued at 30 members for years before Annacondia came. After Annacondia left, his church persuaded him to hold a local church evangelistic crusade. &quot;I don't have the gift of evangelist,&quot; he protested. The lay leaders responded, &quot;You preach and we will pray that God gives you the gift of evangelist!&quot; They held their first service, gave the invitation, and no one responded. Then Prokopchuk felt an inner voice saying, &quot;Try it the way Annacondia does it!&quot; Although it was not part of his Baptist tradition, he began challenging the spirits and praying against them. He gave the invitation again, and 15 to 20 people actually ran up front to receive Christ. He now has 900 in his central church with 2,100 others attending satellite congregations around the city, and his goal is a total of 20,000 members by the year 2000. He has been &quot;doing it like Annacondia&quot; ever since with obvious results. Winning the Urban Masses Among the many things we have learned from our evangelical urbanologists is that the masses of people living in the world class cities today belong to the lower social classes: the poor and oppressed. While it is extremely important not to neglect the upper classes and to encourage ministries such as Eduardo Lorenzo's in Androgue, the fact remains that if we do not win the poorer masses to Christ we will not effectively evangelize the cities of the world. The 5,000 to 20,000 who crowd into Annacondia's crusades night after night are lower class. The 14,000 per day who attend Hector Gimenez's services in the Roca Theater are lower class. Omar Cabrera, pastor of the Vision of the Future Church of 90,000 which is Argentina's

1. From the point of view of personal and Christian preferences, the middle class in the First World would shade toward the left, but the middle class in the Third World would shade toward the right. This is obviously a function of world view, among other things. 2. If there is a trend worldwide, it would seem to be a movement toward the right side of the spectrum. Ironically, both the charismatic movement and the New Age Movement are nudging significant numbers of former left-side people toward the right. Scientism may have seen its day. 3. The masses of the ties of the world, whether Chicago, Calcutta, Cairo or Caracas are found toward the right side of the Wilkes Spectrum. Effective Argentine evangelists such as Annacondia, Gimenez and Cabrera are skillfully contextualizing their message and methodology to communicate with and meet the needs of the lower classes. One of their discoveries, which less successful urban ministers would do well to look into, is the efficacy of power evangelism and spiritual warfare for that particular audience. 4. I hesitate to mention this, but it is a worrisome fact that most of our theological training institutions in the Western world, and many in the non-Western world, talk a great deal about ministering to the poor and oppressed of the world's urban centers in their social ethics classes, but they have recruited faculty and designed their curricula to train for ministry toward the left side of the Wilkes Spectrum. This may be one of the explanations why a surprising number of the urban metachurch pastors in world class cities are without theological degrees while many with theological credentials are frustrated. I believe that the great days for urban evangelism are yet ahead. God is helping us understand the nature of the city through our urbanologists. He is providing us with practitioners who are demonstrating that it can be done. He is helping us understand some of the reasons we have not been as effective as we would like to be. My prayer is that we will combine the theoretical with the practical, the technological with the spiritual, in such a way that city after city in our world will be brought to faith and obedience under the Lordship of Jesus Christ.

You do desire to see signs and wonders wrought in the name of Jesus. This baptism then, is your first great need. -William Booth My childhood years were influenced by an orderly and conservative Anglican tradition. Signs and wonders were not for today and any who spoke in tongues were considered extremists belonging to a strange cult. You could imagine the furor when the assistant rector spoke in tongues! I was converted in 1966 and commenced attending the Salvation Army in 1972. At that time I gave little or no thought to the charismatic question, except that I noticed in my occupation as a funeral director that services conducted in Pentecostal churches were joyful. Ecumenical My first serious encounter with the charismatic issue occurred during our first appointment in 1980. The Salvation Army was invited to share in an interdenominational campaign, with the key evangelist and speaker an Anglican priest. He was the rector of a rapidly growing church, contrary to the declining trends of other Anglican churches. A team accompanied him and, as an ecumenical community, we welcomed them at a special tea. I spoke with several team members. One spoke to me concerning my own conversion and then asked me the question, 'Have you been baptised in the Holy Spirit?' I had no idea what she was talking about and felt most indignant. My enthusiasm for the campaign dwindled because of the charismatic tone of this group. As the week went on, I noticed a freshness and vitality about their Christian faith that I had rarely witnessed. They had something I didn't have and I reacted with anger. I sought to find fault with them, an attitude which they responded to with love and humility. I believed that divisions were caused by charismatic people. It was bad enough that the Anglican church had been infiltrated. Imagine my horror when I learned that there were charismatic Christians even in the Salvation Army! In 1987 we reluctantly accepted an invitation for our corps cadets (youth Bible group) to lead a worship meeting at a neighbouring corps which had a strong charismatic flavour. Much to my surprise, the meeting was a delight to lead. The same

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freshness and vitality that I had witnessed in 1980 was present in that meeting. There was a real body ministry present in that corps. I returned later to our own corps and sat in on a meeting. The contrast between the two congregations was clearly evident and for the first time I was confronted with the question I had so long wanted to avoid. These people whom I considered so strange had something that was lacking in my own Christian life and ministry and in the lives of Christians in general. The years following were difficult for our family. By the end of 1990 I was broken both spiritually and emotionally. Yet again I was requested to lead a meeting of worship in another corps that had a charismatic emphasis. I had never felt so hypocritical in my life. Here I was leading worship of a group of people who had a love and passion for God that was absent in my own life. Enthusiastic Their faith was fresh and enthusiastic. That day was 7 July 1991 and later that evening I knelt down in our sitting room and asked God to make me clean. He answered my prayer! The purity and cleanliness of the Holy Spirit flooded through my innermost being to every joint in my body. I wanted to get up and skip and dance. I loved God and I loved everything around me. That night I was baptised in the Holy Spirit. Almost overnight I found myself on the other side of the charismatic fence and the question took on a new dimension. The division is sad and I am not so naive as to suggest that charismatic Christians have not contributed. However to blame charismatic people almost exclusively is, as I have discovered, inaccurate and untrue. Many noncharismatic Christians have claimed to be made to feel inferior, confused and hurt and I don't doubt this to be the case. The other side of the coin has been feeling shut out; accused of having an experience of the devil; being told I am a 'weirdo' and I have even had invitations to lead worship mysteriously withdrawn. The charismatic question is more than simply the unwanted intrusion of charismatic Christians into the life and style of a noncharismatic church. If we look at it in that light we tread on very dangerous ground as we are effectively limiting the movement of the Holy Spirit. Every denomination has charismatic Christians who speak in tongues. So if we are serious in wanting God's kingdom to be advanced, rather than divided, we need to understand the charismatic question rather than simply condemn it.

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Filled The baptism of the Holy Spirit is one that raises many issues, such as full salvation, sanctification, and being filled with the Holy Spirit. The title we give it is not important; the experience is important. All four Gospels record the promise that Jesus will baptise with the Holy Spirit (Matthew 3:11; Mark 1:8; Luke 3:16; John 1:33). Jesus himself promises that we will be baptised in the Holy Spirit (Acts 1:5), a promise not limited to the believers at Pentecost (Acts 8:17; 9:17; 10.44 and 11:16; 19:6). Baptism in the Holy Spirit is the activation and release of the Holy Spirit in the life of the believer (Acts 1:8). The disciples received the Holy Spirit on the evening of the resurrection day (John 20:22). Likewise we too receive the Holy Spirit at the time of conversion (Romans 8:9; Galatians 3:2; 1 John 3:24). However, the Holy Spirit's release in our lives, although possible and in fact desirable at the time of our conversion, is quite a separate experience. Scripture indicates that the release of the Holy Spirit in the life of the believer may be at the time of conversion (Acts 10:44) and also on later occasions (John 20:22; Acts 2:14; 8:1217; 9:319; 19:16). The founder of the Salvation Army, William Booth testified to this fact in a letter to Dunedin Hall corps reproduced in a Christian Mission Paper in 1869: I desire to give a few brief practical hints, and, first and foremost, I commend one qualification which seems to involve all others. That is the Pentecostal baptism of the Holy Ghost. I would have you settle it in your souls for ever, this one great immutable principle in the economy of grace, the spiritual work can only be done by those who possess spiritual power. I would not have you think that I imagine for a moment that you have not the Spirit. By your fruits I know you have. No men could do the works that are being done in your midst except God was with them. But how much more might be done had you all received this Pentecostal baptism in all its fullness! Experience in the last 300 years, with various revivals, testifies to baptism in the Holy Spirit being a distinct and separate experience and together with signs and wonders has been a common part of revival. It is interesting to look at the growth, in the last 90 years, of the Pentecostal/charismatic churches which give particular emphasis to baptism in the Holy Spirit.

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In the early part of the 20th century 34.4 per cent of the world population were practising Christians. Of this number 3,700,00 were Pentecostal which was less than one per cent of practising Christians. In 1995, 33.7 per cent (over 1291 million) of the world population were practising Christians. However, significantly, of this number over 460 million (approximately one third) were Pentecostal/charismatics. Between 1980 and 1995 the worldwide number of Pentecostal/charismatic Christians rose from 158 million to more than 460 million (Statistics from David Barrett in World Christian Encyclopedia and annual reports in International Bulletin of Missionary Research ). In his book about religious beliefs in Australia entitled Many Faiths One Nation , Ian Gillman observes that in Australia the Pentecostal movement grew by 200 per cent between 1972 and 1984. He further noted that the growth in Pentecostal/charismatic churches between 1976 and 1981 was 87.9 per cent, which is 75 per cent higher than the nearest traditional denomination. These trends, I imagine, would be similar in other countries. As we ponder on these figures of fruitfulness for the Kingdom of God, the words of Jesus (Acts 1:5) promising the baptism in the Holy Spirit for all believers, need to be understood and appropriated. Observable Perhaps the most critical point is the assertion by many Pentecostals that the initial sign for being baptised in the Holy Spirit is to speak in tongues. From a biblical perspective, I believe there is overwhelming and compelling evidence that in the early church, the initial signs of baptism in the Holy Spirit was to speak in tongues (Mark 16:17; Acts 2:4; 10:46; 19:6). Two other accounts do not directly indicate that they spoke in tongues Acts 8:17; 9:17. In the first account something observable happened, even though not the signs and wonders which occurred earlier in Acts 8:6,7. According to many reputable Bible scholars this observable sign was speaking in tongues. In the account of Acts 9:17 when Paul was filled with the Holy Spirit, although it does not say specifically that he spoke in tongues there and then, we do know that he did speak in tongues (1 Corinthians 14:18). With this Biblical perspective, what about today? Is it possible to be baptised in the Holy Spirit and not speak in tongues? My own opinion is an overwhelming Yes! Many Christians, spiritual giants with powerful ministries, have never spoken in tongues. I personally did not receive the gift of tongues until some months after the experience of baptism with the Holy Spirit.

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Michael Harper shares this view and gives three reasons why people baptised in the Spirit may not speak in tongues: Firstly, not knowing: I did not know how to speak in tongues. In fact I believed the Holy Spirit spoke through me. I often had the urge to praise God with strange syllables but stopped myself because it wasn't what I believed was speaking in tongues. When I finally discovered that I had to speak, the unknown language flowed. Secondly, fear: unfortunately tongues has been misused in the past as was the case with the Corinthian church. This has caused genuine fear in some people. Thirdly, prejudice: some are blatantly against speaking in tongues. negative things about it and so are brought up, as I was, to reject it. They hear

I would add a further reason and that is there are many who are not personally opposed, and are happy for others to have the gift, but don't wish to appropriate it for themselves. Universal Another very contentious issue is whether tongues is universal for all Spiritfilled Christians? I believe that tongues, although not appropriated by all Spiritfilled Christians, is an available gift. I base this on a number of reasons. Firstly, it is a glorious gift that deepens prayer life and relationship with the Lord. I have also witnessed many answers to prayers in tongues. I find it difficult to believe that God would give such spiritual benefits to some and not to all. Secondly, speaking in tongues and praying in the Spirit are clearly identified as the same in 1 Corinthians 14:2, 1318. There are a number of references in Scripture to 'praying in the Spirit' and each appears to point to a universal use of tongues, for example, Romans 8:26; Ephesians 6:18; Jude 20. In the book of Acts where believers prayed in tongues after being filled with the Spirit, it does not say some prayed in tongues. It is more probable that all prayed in tongues. Thirdly, the main biblical objection to the universal use of tongues, it is claimed, is found in 1 Corinthians 12:10 - 'to another, speaking in different kinds of tongues'. On initial reading this would appear to be the case. The argument hinges on the different Greek words use for another . In this passage the word 'another' appears eight times, but it translates two quite different Greek words. The Greek words are allos meaning 'another of the same kind' and heteros meaning 'another of a different kind'. So the passage reads: 'to

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another ( allos ) the message of knowledge by means of the same Spirit, to another ( heteros ) faith by the same Spirit, to another ( allos ) gifts of healing by that one Spirit, to another ( allos ) miraculous power, to another ( allos ) prophecy, to another ( allos ) distinguishing between spirits, to another ( heteros ) speaking in different kinds of tongues, to still another ( allos ) the interpretation of tongues.' For all gifts, except faith and tongues, Paul uses the Greek allos . For faith and tongues he uses heteros . No one would suggest that only some have faith because the gift of faith is different. Similarly, we cannot claim that because heteros is used, the gift of tongues is only available to some. Likewise, there are two kinds of tongues. C. Peter Wagner describes these differences as private tongues and public tongues. Private tongues is a personal prayer language, whereas public tongues, which 1 Corinthians 12 speaks about, is one which can be used publicly with accompanying interpretation. Finally, the aspect charismatic people must beware of is spiritual pride. We have been saved, and are what we are, purely by the grace of God and none of us, charismatic or noncharismatic, has anything to boast about (Ephesians 2:8,9). Timely A timely warning was given by Charles Widdowson: Don't go overboard with the power and the gifts at the expense of the person and the fruit. I want to underline that in the early days of the charismatic movement in the late sixties and early seventies, all you heard about was the Holy Spirit and the gifts of the Spirit. We heard very, very, little, comparatively, about Jesus and love. Now that has been balanced, I believe. We've got to keep our eyes on Jesus. We have the fullness of the Holy Spirit, and the fruit of the Spirit is love and nothing of the power is to be exercised apart from the fruit of the Spirit which is love. I endorse these remarks. Any gift possessed and exercised without love amounts to nothing, as Paul says in 1 Corinthians 13. Something of William Booth's own attitude to gift of the Spirit can be gauged from the following letter, published in The East London Evangelist , 1 April 1869: Letter from William Booth TO THE BRETHREN AND SISTERS LABOURING FOR JESUS In connection with the Dunedin Hall Christian Mission, Edinburgh BELOVED FRIENDS Though I have not been privileged to see you in the flesh, yet I have heard with great thankfulness from time to time of your work of faith and labour of love: and I rejoice greatly in the abundant blessing granted to your labours, and bless God for every brand plucked from the

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everlasting through your instrumentality. I earnestly pray that you may be made a hundredfold more useful in the future than you have been in the past. The work in which you are engaged is the most important that can engage the attention or call forth the energies of any being... Success in soulwinning, like all other work, both human and divine, depends on certain conditions... If you want to succeed you must be careful to comply with these conditions... I desire to give a few brief practical hints...And, first and foremost, I commend one qualification which seems to involve all others. That is, the Pentecostal baptism of the Holy Ghost. I would have you settle it in your souls for ever this one great immutable principle in the economy of grace, that spiritual work can only be done by those who possess spiritual power. No matter what else you may lack, or what may be against you, with the Holy Ghost you will succeed; but without the Holy Spirit, no matter what else you may possess, you will utterly and eternally fail. Many make mistakes here. Aroused by the inward urgings of the Holy Spirit, they endeavour to comply with the call which comes from the word and the necessities of their fellow men; but being destitute of this power, they fail, and instead of going to the Strong for strength, they give up in despair. Again aroused, again they resolve and venture forth, but having no more power than before, they are as impotent as ever. And fail they must, until baptised with power from on high. This I am convinced, is the one great need of the Church. We want no new truths, agencies, means, or appliances. We only want more of the fire of the Holy Ghost. ... O what zeal, what selfdenial, what meekness, what boldness, what holiness, what love, would there not be? And with all this, what power for your great work? The whole city would feel it. God's people in every direction would catch the fire, and sinners would fall on every side. Difficulties would vanish, devils be conquered, infidels believe, and the glory of God be displayed... You do desire to see signs and wonders wrought in the name of Jesus. To see a great awakening among the careless crowds around you.... This baptism then, is your first great need. If you think with me, will you not tarry for it? Offer yourselves to God for the fullness. Lay aside every weight... Hold on! Though your feelings are barren, your way dark, and your difficulties be multiplied, steadily hang on the word of God.

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Expect the baptism every hour; wait if he tarry. 'This kind goeth not forth but by prayer and fasting'; and the Lord whom you seek shall suddenly come to his temple. I have more to say to you, but must wait another opportunity. Yours in the fellowship of the Gospel. WILLIAM BOOTH These are strong words. Every Christian today needs this baptism in the Holy Spirit. We must, if we are serious about the kingdom of God, teach this to our people and pray for revival power to return to our church communities.

Todd Bentley (Including details of a revelation by Bob Jones) A Word through Todd Bentley Fresh Fire Ministries (freshfire.ca) The last few weeks God has moved on my heart to share several prophetic insights about Where we are as a church? Where we are going? And what will be required of us to get there?

IN EZEKIEL CHAPTER 47, WE SEE &quot;THE RIVER&quot;

Ezekiel 47:1 &quot;Afterward he brought me again unto the door of the temple; and, behold, waters issued out from under the threshold of the temple eastward: for the forefront of the temple stood toward the east, and the waters came down from under from the right side of the temple, at the south side of the altar.&quot; These waters are the waters of the 'River of God' in {Rev 22:1]

THE FIRST FUNCTION OF THE RIVER IS LIFE, REFRESHING, RENEWAL, AND REVIVAL

I believe that we can see in this passage of scripture Where we are? And where we are heading as a church? The first thing we see is the &quot;River of Life&quot; Ezekiel 47:9 &quot;And it shall come to pass, that everything that lived, which moved, whithersoever the rivers shall come, shall live: and there shall be a very great multitude of fish, because these waters shall come thither: for they shall be healed; and every thing shall live whither the river cometh.

THE SECOND FUNCTION IS HEALING

We see the second function of the river in Ezekiel 47:8 &quot;Then said he unto me, These waters issue out toward the east country, and go down into the desert, and go into the sea: which being brought forth into the sea, the waters shall be healed.&quot;

EVANGELISM AND HARVEST

We then see the third function of the river in Ezekiel 47:10 &quot;And it shall come to pass, that the fishers shall stand upon it from Engedi even unto Eneglaim; they shall be a place to spread forth nets; their fish shall be according to their kinds, as the fish of the great sea, exceeding many.&quot; I believe in the early 1990's there was a outpouring of the spirit known as &quot; The River&quot; or the River of God, Renewal or &quot; The Toronto blessing &quot; This move of God was marked with a real time of Joy, refreshing, renewal, inner healing, laughter and has and will continue to impact the globe, but I believe we are beginning to step into the next function: Healing

BOB JONES' REVELATION OF THE WOMAN AND HER NINE CHILDREN

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In a prophetic trance a good friend of mine by the name of Bob Jones had a woman named &quot;GRACE&quot; come to her with her &quot;9 children.&quot; In this experience the woman asked Bob Where she could find a church that would have her 9 children, known as the 9 gifts of the spirit. In this experience Bob was told that the &quot;5th child {Healing}&quot; was being restored to the church. In the last few years there has been a continued move of God's spirit arising in the earth with a real focus on the ministry of healing and miracles. Healing rooms are springing up all over America and beyond. I have found in our travels a growing interest in John G. Lake and the ministry of Alexander Dowie, the revival of the 1940's and 50's known as the &quot; Voice of Healing&quot; --- &quot;re- digging the ancient wells of revival&quot; and healing anointing.

THE COMMON PROPHETIC WORD IN THE BODY

The common prophetic word in the body of Christ is: &quot;We are on the verge of a healing revival beyond anything that we have seen!!! Prophets have prophesied and many are already beginning to forerun a new anointing for signs and wonders. This is the beginning of the healing waters; get ready for the release of Power Evangelism and Harvest. I want to point out one last function of the river and that is fullness,--- &quot;The Spirit without measure&quot; -- A river which could not be crossed, so deep one must swim. I believe in this coming season of God's river movement. God is about to bring us into the revelation of being filled with the fullness of God and walking in union with the Lord {ONENESS}. Get ready for the complete immersion of the Holy Ghost and fire.

WE ARE IN THE BOOK OF ESTHER

This revival, Where we are? And where we are going--- Is also parallel in the book of Esther Ch 1 and 2 with prophetic insights of what God requires of us? In this next wave. In Esther 1:1-4 it declares, &quot;Now it came to pass in the days of Ahasuerus, (this is Ahasuerus which reigned, from India even unto Ethiopia, over an hundred and seven and twenty provinces:) 2 That in those days, when the king Ahasuerus sat on the throne of his kingdom, which was in Shushan the palace: 3 In the third year of his reign, he made a feast unto all his princes and his servants; the power of Persia and Media, the nobles and princes of the provinces, being before him: 4 When he showed the riches of his glorious kingdom and the honor of his excellent majesty many days, even an hundred and fourscore days.&quot;

THE FATHER'S PARTY OF THE 1900'S

In verse Ch 1:1-4 the king proclaims a Feast {party} --at this party drinks are served. Esther 1:7 and they gave them drinks in vessels of gold, and royal wine in abundance, according to the state of the king. This is a refreshing, renewal, revival

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and a prophetic picture of the Fathers &quot;party&quot; in the 1900's. The purpose of the renewal: to show the riches of his glorious kingdom and the honor of his excellent majesty, bring us into a fresh revelation of his power and cause us to fall in love with Jesus all over again.

THE TRANSITION TO A &quot;GO YE&quot;

In Esther CH 1: 9 &quot;Also Vashti the queen made a feast for the women in the royal house which belonged to king Ahasuerus, The queen was so caught up in the excitement of the party {renewal} that it happened when the command of the king came for the queen to be brought before him for the purpose of showing the princes and the people her beauty, she refused. I fear that many of us will fail to hear and recognize the time we are in, for the excitement that the renewal is and has been and miss the &quot;command of the King&quot; It is time for our beauty to be made manifest to the princes of darkness and a lost and dying world by understanding it is time to &quot;Go Ye&quot; We need recognize that the time that we have entered into is a time to bear the king's image. The oil of the Lord, favor and resources is shifting to Matt 10:1 and 7, 8

HE GAVE THEM POWER

Matthew 10:1 &quot;And when he had called unto him his twelve disciples, he gave them power against unclean spirits, to cast them out, and to heal all manner of sickness and all manner of diseases.&quot; Matthew 10:7 and as ye go, preach, saying, the kingdom of heaven is at hand: 8 Heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, cast out devils: freely ye have received, freely give.&quot;

GOD IS ABOUT TO GIVE WHOLE NATIONS AND CITIES

It is time to Give; God is about to give whole nations and cities!! {Ps 2} God will bless those who allow themselves to move deeper into the river of what is doing and manifest the nature {beauty} of the Lord in word and power. The focus is moving from an introspective inner healing; (bless me and church conference focus mentality) to a &quot;Go Ye&quot; ---outside of the church walls, Healing and harvest thrust. In The book of Esther Ch 2 The King {Jesus} is looking for a new Queen to favor and share the glories, majesty and power of his kingdom. I want to show you &quot;Esther's Banquet&quot; In the banquet in Esther 1 the focus was &quot;wine in abundance,&quot; according to the generosity of the King Es 1:7 { Renewal movement} In Esther 2:18 The focus is &quot;Gifts&quot; according to the generosity of the King. In this next move of God-- parallel with the book of Esther and Esther's banquet.

MOVING FROM &quot;GIRDING YOUR LOINS,&quot; TO SEASON OF FAITHFUL NOBODIES -- In 2002, A POPCORN RELEASE OF PAUL'S AND BARNABUS'S

Jesus will be very generous with the five fold gifts {Eph 4:11} I feel in my spirit that the church has moved from a season of girding up their loins and preparing for the battle and a season of inner healing and refreshing: to a season of the manifestation

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of secret faithful nobodies. These nobodies will be a fresh release of Eph 4:11 ministries. What I mean by this is that in this year and the year 2002 and beyond that there is going to be a &quot;popcorn release&quot; of ministries like Paul and Barnabus. Acts 13:1-2, &quot;Now there were in the church that was at Antioch certain prophets and teachers; as Barnabas, and Simeon that was called Niger, and Lucius of Cyrene, and Manaen, which had been brought up with Herod the tetrarch, and Saul. As they ministered to the Lord, and fasted, the Holy Ghost said, Separate me Barnabas and Saul for the work whereunto I have called them.&quot;

THRUST INTO THE HARVEST

The church has been in a season of renewal of passion for Jesus, ministering to the Lord, seeking his face and not just his hand. This will be a continual theme into the 21st century. God is teaching the church to first minister to Him. But the time has now come where those who have remained separate in their heart for years are going to find their release and resources to be thrust into the harvest, --some overnight as they hear the command of the King!! There were two requirements for this position.

BEAUTIFUL YOUNG VIRGINS

In Esther 2:2 &quot;And let beautiful young virgins be sought&quot; Esther 2:12 &quot;for thus were the days of their preparations apportioned: six months with oil of myrrh and six months with perfumes, preparations for beautifying women.&quot;

A HIGHER STANDARD OF HOLINESS--WHAT WAS PERMISSIBLE, IS NOT PERMISSIBLE ANY LONGER

God is looking for a higher standard of Holiness. What was permissible in the last season will not be in this. God wants us to wear his harness of deeper commitment and sacrifice. We must be willing to &quot;bathe&quot; in death to self, and humility and to examine our hearts in a deeper way. What kind of purity do you have before the Lord?

BATHED IN PERFUMES. WHAT DOES THAT MEAN?

Bathed in Perfumes: Intimacy. God will trust with his power those who have taken and continue to take the position of Peter and John and have been with Jesus. We must have the fragrance of passion for Jesus, intimacy and death to self. GET READY!!! GET READY!!! GET READY!!! GET READY!!! GET READY!!!

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Battle Cry

Kathy Allan &quot;Do you hear the battle cry? 'Soldiers of our God arise, the day is drawing nearer.' Soldier, are you sharp and battle ready? how fit are you? how willing to fight? Are you consumed with a desire to soldier for Christ? 'Shake the slumber from your eyes, the light is growing clearer.' How's your vision? Do you see the true battle lines, or have you drawn your own? Who are you fighting? Time is short. Commit to the Salvation War! 'Sit no longer idly by, while the heedless millions die.' Does this cut you to the heart? Then get up and fight!!! Souls are hanging in the balance while you sleep. You are responsible for their fate. You signed up for this -- remember? Is your name on the &quot;Articles of War&quot;?? If not, sign up and join the ranks! 'Lift the blood-stained banner high and take the field for Jesus!' Are you FURIOUS with the enemy?? Do you despise his dark ways? Do you watch the news? surf the net? watch TV? Do you see him working everywhere you turn and every place you go? rage, slander, greed, lust, selfishness, bitterness, jealousy, idolatry, apathy, murder, abuse, deceit, violence, war, theft -- yes, you see him. He's in our ranks. Do you see him? oh yes, you see him in all his pernicious glory, dividing and conquering, setting teeth on edge, hardening hearts, inciting hostility, killing God dreams, choke holding corps, laughing and celebrating. Get FURIOUS with him! not each other. Shun him, turf him, not your fellow soldier! fight him, not each other!!! You're supposed to be on the same side. For the love of Christ! get a clear objective and read your orders! (The Bible) and obey them!!! Then fight!!! 'Storm the forts of darkness, bring them down. Pull down the devil's kingdom, where'er he holds dominion, storm the forts of darkness, bring them down!' They will NOT come down on their own - every soldier is needed. Your Commander In Chief has already won the war!!! 'Glory, honour to the Lamb, praise and power be forever to the Lamb.' We must fight to the end. Yes the war is won, SALVATION HAS BEEN SECURED FOR ALL! Jesus is King!!! But the battle for the souls of humankind rages on.

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As long as people feel hopeless,helpless,lost, empty; while people are attempting and comitting suicide, while they feel overwhelmed, seeking professional help and finding no relief, as long as they are weary, victimized, traumatized, marginalized, hypnotized; as long as they are imprisoned, lonely, blinded, starving, needy, searching, broken, we MUST fight! There IS hope and help! There IS a way out! There is a better life. There is comfort and peace. There is healing and freedom! There is JESUS! The world needs Him!!! We know Him!!! Let's win souls!

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Alexander I. Solzhenitsyn Commencement Address Delivered At Harvard University, June 8, 1978 reprinted with permission I am sincerely happy to be here with you on the occasion of the 327th commencement of this old and illustrious university. My congratulations and best wishes to all of today's graduates. Harvard's motto is &quot;VERITAS.&quot; Many of you have already found out and others will find out in the course of their lives that truth eludes us as soon as our concentration begins to flag, all the while leaving the illusion that we are continuing to pursue it. This is the source of much discord. Also, truth seldom is sweet; it is almost invariably bitter. A measure of truth is included in my speech today, but I offer it as a friend, not as an adversary. Three years ago in the United States I said certain things that were rejected and appeared unacceptable. Today, however, many people agree with what I said . . . The split in today's world is perceptible even to a hasty glance. Any of our contemporaries readily identifies two world powers, each of them already capable of destroying each other. However, the understanding of the split too often is limited to this political conception: the illusion according to which danger may be abolished through successful diplomatic negotiations or by achieving a balance of armed forces. The truth is that the split is both more profound and more alienating, that the rifts are more numerous than one can see at first glance. These deep manifold splits bear the danger of equally manifold disaster for all of us, in accordance with the ancient truth that a kingdom -- in this case, our Earth -- divided against itself cannot stand. There is the concept of the Third World: thus, we already have three worlds. Undoubtedly, however, the number is even greater; we are just too far away to see. Every ancient and deeply rooted self-contained culture, especially if it is spread over a wide part of the earth's surface, constitutes a self-contained world, full of riddles and surprises to Western thinking. As a minimum, we must include in this China, India, the Muslim world, and Africa, if indeed we accept the approximation of viewing the latter two as uniform. For one thousand years Russia belonged to such a category, although Western thinking systematically committed the mistake of denying its special character and therefore never understood it, just as today the West does not understand Russia in Communist captivity. And while it may be that in past years Japan has increasingly become, in effect, a Far West, drawing ever closer to Western ways (I am no judge here), Israel, I think, should not be reckoned as part of the West, if only because of the decisive circumstance that its state system is fundamentally linked to its religion.

A World Split Apart

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How short a time ago, relatively, the small world of modern Europe was easily seizing colonies all over the globe, not only without anticipating any real resistance, but usually with contempt for any possible values in the conquered people's approach to life. It all seemed an overwhelming success, with no geographic limits. Western society expanded in a triumph of human independence and power. And all of a sudden the twentieth century brought the clear realization of this society's fragility. We now see that the conquests proved to be short lived and precarious (and this, in turn, points to defects in the Western view of the world which led to these conquests). Relations with the former colonial world now have switched to the opposite extreme and the Western world often exhibits an excess of obsequiousness, but it is difficult yet to estimate the size of the bill which former colonial countries will present to the West and it is difficult to predict whether the surrender not only of its last colonies, but of everything it owns, will be sufficient for the West to clear this account. But the persisting blindness of superiority continues to hold the belief that all the vast regions of our planet should develop and mature to the level of contemporary Western systems, the best in theory and the most attractive in practice; that all those other worlds are but temporarily prevented (by wicked leaders or by severe crises or by their own barbarity and incomprehension) from pursuing Western pluralistic democracy and adopting the Western way of life. Countries are judged on the merit of their progress in that direction. But in fact such a conception is a fruit of Western incomprehension of the essence of other worlds, a result of mistakenly measuring them all with a Western yardstick. The real picture of our planet's development bears little resemblance to all this. The anguish of a divided world gave birth to the theory of convergence between the leading Western countries and the Soviet Union. It is a soothing theory which overlooks the fact that these worlds are not evolving toward each other and that neither one can be transformed into the other without violence. Besides, convergence inevitably means acceptance of the other side's defects, too. and this can hardly suit anyone. If I were today addressing an audience in my country, in my examination of the overall pattern of the world's rifts I would have concentrated on the calamities of the East. But since my forced exile in the West has now lasted four years and since my audience is a Western one, I think it may be of greater interest to concentrate on certain aspects of the contemporary West, such as I see them. A decline in courage may be the most striking feature that an outside observer notices in the West today. The Western world has lost its civic courage, both as a whole and separately, in each country, in each government, in each political party, and, of course, in the United Nations. Such a decline in courage is particularly noticeable among the ruling and intellectual elites, causing an impression of a loss of

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courage by the entire society. There are many courageous individuals, but they have no determining influence on public life. Political and intellectual functionaries exhibit this depression, passivity, and perplexity in their actions and in their statements, and even more so in their selfserving rationales as to how realistic, reasonable, and intellectually and even morally justified it is to base state policies on weakness and cowardice. And the decline in courage, at times attaining what could be termed a lack of manhood, is ironically emphasized by occasional outbursts and inflexibility on the part of those same functionaries when dealing with weak governments and with countries that lack support, or with doomed currents which clearly cannot offer resistance. But they get tongue-tied and paralyzed when they deal with powerful governments and threatening forces, with aggressors and international terrorists. Must one point out that from ancient times a decline in courage has been considered the first symptom of the end? When the modern Western states were being formed, it was proclaimed as a principle that governments are meant to serve man and that man lives in order to be free and pursue happiness. (See, for example, the American Declaration of Independence.) Now at last during past decades technical and social progress has permitted the realization of such aspirations: the welfare state. Every citizen has been granted the desired freedom and material goods in such quantity and in such quality as to guarantee in theory the achievement of happiness, in the debased sense of the word which has come into being during those same decades. (In the process, however, one psychological detail has been overlooked: the constant desire to have still more things and a still better life and the struggle to this end imprint many Western faces with worry and even depression, though it is customary to carefully conceal such feelings. This active and tense competition comes to dominate all human thought and does not in the least open a way to free spiritual development.) The individual's independence from many types of state pressure has been guaranteed; the majority of the people have been granted well-being to an extent their fathers and grandfathers could not even dream about; it has become possible to raise young people according to these ideals, preparing them for and summoning them toward physical bloom, happiness, and leisure, the possession of material goods, money, and leisure, toward an almost unlimited freedom in the choice of pleasures. So who should now renounce all this, why and for the sake of what should one risk one's precious life in defense of the common good and particularly in the nebulous case when the security of one's nation must be defended in an as yet distant land?

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Even biology tells us that a high degree of habitual well-being is not advantageous to a living organism. Today, well-being in the life of Western society has begun to take off its pernicious mask. Western society has chosen for itself the organization best suited to its purposes and one I might call legalistic. The limits of human rights and rightness are determined by a system of laws; such limits are very broad. People in the West have acquired considerable skill in using, interpreting, and manipulating law (though laws tend to be too complicated for an average person to understand without the help of an expert). Every conflict is solved according to the letter of the law and this is considered to be the ultimate solution. If one is risen from a legal point of view, nothing more is required, nobody may mention that one could still not be right, and urge self-restraint or a renunciation of these rights, call for sacrifice and selfless risk: this would simply sound absurd. Voluntary self-restraint is almost unheard of: everybody strives toward further expansion to the extreme limit of the legal frames. (An oil company is legally blameless when it buys up an invention of a new type of energy in order to prevent its use. A food product manufacturer is legally blameless when he poisons his produce to make it last longer: after all, people are free not to purchase it.) I have spent all my life under a Communist regime and I will tell you that a society without any objective legal scale is a terrible one indeed. But a society based on the letter of the law and never reaching any higher fails to take full advantage of the full range of human possibilities. The letter of the law is too cold and formal to have a beneficial influence on society. Whenever the tissue of life is woven of legalistic relationships, this creates an atmosphere of spiritual mediocrity that paralyzes man's noblest impulses. And it will be simply impossible to bear up to the trials of this threatening century with nothing but the supports of a legalistic structure. Today's Western society has revealed the inequality between the freedom for good deeds and the freedom for evil deeds. A statesman who wants to achieve something highly constructive for his country has to move cautiously and even timidly; thousands of hasty (and irresponsible) critics cling to him at all times; he is constantly rebuffed by parliament and the press. He has to prove that his every step is well founded and absolutely flawless. Indeed, an outstanding, truly great person who has unusual and unexpected initiatives in mind does not get any chance to assert himself; dozens of traps will be set for him from the beginning. Thus mediocrity triumphs under the guise of democratic restraints. It is feasible and easy everywhere to undermine administrative power and it has in fact been drastically weakened in all Western countries. The defense of individual rights has reached such extremes as to make society as a whole defenseless

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against certain individuals. It is time, in the West, to defend not so much human rights as human obligations. On the other hand, destructive and irresponsible freedom has been granted boundless space. Society has turned out to have scarce defense against the abyss of human decadence, for example against the misuse of liberty for moral violence against young people, such as motion pictures full of pornography, crime, and horror. This is all considered to be part of freedom and to be counterbalanced, in theory, by the young people's right not to look and not to accept. Life organized legalistically has thus shown its inability to defend itself against the corrosion of evil. And what shall we say about the dark realms of overt criminality? Legal limits (especially in the United States) are broad enough to encourage not only individual freedom but also some misuse of such freedom. The culprit can go unpunished or obtain undeserved leniency -- all with the support of thousands of defenders in the society. When a government earnestly undertakes to root out terrorism, public opinion immediately accuses it of violating the terrorist's civil rights. There is quite a number of such cases. This tilt of freedom toward evil has come about gradually, but it evidently stems from a humanistic and benevolent concept according to which man -- the master of the world -- does not bear any evil within himself, and all the defects of life are caused by misguided social systems, which must therefore be corrected. Yet strangely enough, though the best social conditions have been achieved in the West, there still remains a great deal of crime; there even is considerably more of it than in the destitute and lawless Soviet society. (There is a multitude of prisoners in our camps who are termed criminals, but most of them never committed any crime; they merely tried to defend themselves against a lawless state by resorting to means outside the legal framework.) The press, too, of course, enjoys the widest freedom. (I shall be using the word &quot;press&quot; to include all the media.) But what use does it make of it? Here again, the overriding concern is not to infringe the letter of the law. There is no true moral responsibility for distortion or disproportion. What sort of responsibility does a journalist or a newspaper have to the readership or to history? If they have misled public opinion by inaccurate information or wrong conclusions, even if they have contributed to mistakes on a state level, do we know of any case of open regret voiced by the same journalist or the same newspaper? No; this would damage sales. A nation may be the worse for such a mistake, but the journalist always gets away with it. It is most likely that he will start writing the exact opposite to his previous statements with renewed aplomb. Because instant and credible information is required, it becomes necessary to resort to guesswork, rumors, and suppositions to fill in the voids, and none of them will ever be refuted; they settle into the readers' memory. How many hasty, immature,

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superficial, and misleading judgments are expressed everyday, confusing readers, and then left hanging? The press can act the role of public opinion or miseducate it. Thus we may see terrorists heroized, or secret matters pertaining to the nation's defense publicly revealed, or we may witness shameless intrusion into the privacy of well-known people according to the slogan &quot;Everyone is entitled to know everything.&quot; (But this is a false slogan of a false era; far greater in value is the forfeited right of people not to know, not to have their divine souls stuffed with gossip, nonsense, vain talk. A person who works and leads a meaningful life has no need for this excessive and burdening flow of information.) Hastiness and superficiality -- these are the psychic diseases of the twentieth century and more than anywhere else this is manifested in the press. In-depth analysis of a problem is anathema to the press; it is contrary to its nature. The press merely picks out sensational formulas. Such as it is, however, the press has become the greatest power within Western countries, exceeding that of the legislature, the executive, and the judiciary. Yet one would like to ask: According to what law has it been elected and to whom is it responsible? In the Communist East, a journalist is frankly appointed as a state official. But who has voted Western journalists into their positions of power, for how long a time, and with what prerogatives? There is yet another surprise for someone coming from the totalitarian East with its rigorously unified press: One discovers a common trend of preferences within the Western press as a whole (the spirit of the time), generally accepted patterns of judgment, and maybe common corporate interests, the sum effect being not competition but unification. Unrestrained freedom exists for the press, but not for readership, because newspapers mostly transmit in a forceful and emphatic way those opinions which do not too openly contradict their own and that general trend. Without any censorship in the West, fashionable trends of thought and ideas are fastidiously separated from those that are not fashionable, and the latter, without ever being forbidden have little chance of finding their way into periodicals or books or being heard in colleges. Your scholars are free in the legal sense, but they are hemmed in by the idols of the prevailing fad. There is no open violence, as in the East; however, a selection dictated by fashion and the need to accommodate mass standards frequently prevents the most independent-minded persons from contributing to public life and gives rise to dangerous herd instincts that block dangerous herd development. In America, I have received letters from highly intelligent persons -- maybe a teacher in a faraway small college who could do much for the renewal and salvation of his country, but the country cannot hear him because the media will not provide him with a forum. This gives birth to strong mass prejudices, to a blindness which is perilous

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in our dynamic era. An example is the self-deluding interpretation of the state of affairs in the contemporary world that functions as a sort of petrified armor around people's minds, to such a degree that human voices from seventeen countries of Eastern Europe and Eastern Asia cannot pierce it. It will be broken only by the inexorable crowbar of events. I have mentioned a few traits of Western life which surprise and shock a new arrival to this world . The purpose and scope of this speech will not allow me to continue such a survey, in particular to look into the impact of these characteristics on important aspects of a nation's life, such as elementary education, advanced education in the humanities, and art. It is almost universally recognized that the West shows all the world the way to successful economic development, even though in past years it has been sharply offset by chaotic inflation. However, many people living in the West are dissatisfied with their own society. They despise it or accuse it of no longer being up to the level of maturity by mankind. And this causes many to sway toward socialism, which is a false and dangerous current. I hope that no one present will suspect me of expressing my partial criticism of the Western system in order to suggest socialism as an alternative. No; with the experience of a country where socialism has been realized, I shall not speak for such an alternative. The mathematician Igor Shafarevich, a member of the Soviet Academy of Science, has written a brilliantly argued book entitled Socialism; this is a penetrating historical analysis demonstrating that socialism of any type and shade leads to a total destruction of the human spirit and to a leveling of mankind into death. Shafarevich's book was published in France almost two years ago and so far no one has been found to refute it. It will shortly be published in English in the U.S. But should I be asked, instead, whether I would propose the West, such as it is today, as a model to my country, I would frankly have to answer negatively. No, I could not recommend your society as an ideal for the transformation of ours. Through deep suffering, people in our own country have now achieved a spiritual development of such intensity that the Western system in its present state of spiritual exhaustion does not look attractive. Even those characteristics of your life which I have just enumerated are extremely saddening. A fact which cannot be disputed is the weakening of human personality in the West while in the East it has become firmer and stronger. Six decades for our people and three decades for the people of Eastern Europe; during that time we have been through a spiritual training far in advance of Western experience. The complex and deadly crush of life has produced stronger, deeper, and more interesting personalities than those generated by standardized Western well-being. Therefore, if our society were to be transformed into yours, it would mean an improvement in certain aspects, but also a change for the worse on some particularly significant points.

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Of course, a society cannot remain in an abyss of lawlessness, as is the case in our country. But it is also demeaning for it to stay on such a soulless and smooth plane of legalism, as is the case in yours. After the suffering of decades of violence and oppression, the human soul longs for things higher, warmer, and purer than those offered by today's mass living habits, introduced as by a calling card by the revolting invasion of commercial advertising, by TV stupor, and by intolerable music. All this is visible to numerous observers from all the worlds of our planet. Western way of life is less and less likely to become the leading model. The

There are telltale symptoms by which history gives warning to a threatened or perishing society. Such are, for instance, a decline of the arts or a lack of great statesmen. Indeed, sometimes the warnings are quite explicit and concrete. The center of your democracy and of your culture is left without electric power for a few hours only, and all of a sudden crowds of American citizens start looting and creating havoc. The smooth surface film must be very thin, then, the social system quite unstable and unhealthy. But the fight for our planet, physical and spiritual, a fight of cosmic proportions, is not a vague matter of the future; it has already started. The forces of Evil have begun their decisive offensive. You can feel their pressure, yet your screens and publications are full of prescribed smiles and raised glasses. What is the joy about? How has this unfavorable relation of forces come about? How did the West decline from its triumphal march to its present debility? Have there been fatal turns and losses of direction in its development? It does not seem so. The West kept advancing steadily in accordance with its proclaimed social intentions, hand in hand with a dazzling progress in technology. And all of a sudden it found itself in its present state of weakness. This means that the mistake must be at the root, at the very foundation of thought in modern times. I refer to the prevailing Western view of the world in modern times. I refer to the prevailing Western view of the world which was born in the Renaissance and has found political expression since the Age of Enlightenment. It became the basis for political and social doctrine and could be called rationalistic humanism or humanistic autonomy: the pro-claimed and practiced autonomy of man from any higher force above him. It could also be called anthropocentricity, with man seen as the center of all. The turn introduced by the Renaissance was probably inevitable historically: the Middle Ages had come to a natural end by exhaustion, having become an intolerable despotic repression of man's physical nature in favor of the spiritual one. But then we recoiled from the spirit and embraced all that is material, excessively and incommensurately. The humanistic way of thinking, which had proclaimed itself our guide, did not admit the existence of intrinsic evil in man, nor did it see any task

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higher than the attainment of happiness on earth. It started modern Western civilization on the dangerous trend of worshiping man and his material needs. Everything beyond physical well-being and the accumulation of material goods, all other human requirements and characteristics of a subtle and higher nature, were left outside the area of attention of state and social systems, as if human life did not have any higher meaning. Thus gaps were left open for evil, and its drafts blow freely today. Mere freedom per se does not in the least solve all the problems of human life and even adds a number of new ones. And yet in early democracies, as in American democracy at the time of its birth, all individual human rights were granted on the ground that man is God's creature. That is, freedom was given to the individual conditionally, in the assumption of his constant religious responsibility. Such was the heritage of the preceding one thousand years. Two hundred or even fifty years ago, it would have seemed quite impossible, in America, that an individual be granted boundless freedom with no purpose, simply for the satisfaction of his whims. Subsequently, however, all such limitations were eroded everywhere in the West; a total emancipation occurred from the moral heritage of Christian centuries with their great reserves of mercy and sacrifice. State systems were becoming ever more materialistic. The West has finally achieved the rights of man, and even excess, but man's sense of responsibility to God and society has grown dimmer and dimmer. In the past decades, the legalistic selfishness of the Western approach to the world has reached its peak and the world has found itself in a harsh spiritual crisis and a political impasse. All the celebrated technological achievements of progress, including the conquest of outer space, do not redeem the twentieth century's moral poverty, which no one could have imagined even as late as the nineteenth century. As humanism in its development was becoming more and more materialistic, it also increasingly allowed concepts to be used first by socialism and then by communism, so that Karl Marx was able to say, in 1844, that &quot;communism is naturalized humanism.&quot; This statement has proved to be not entirely unreasonable. One does not see the same stones in the foundations of an eroded humanism and of any type of socialism: boundless materialism; freedom from religion and religious responsibility (which under Communist regimes attains the stage of antireligious dictatorship); concentration on social structures with an allegedly scientific approach. (This last is typical of both the Age of Enlightenment and of Marxism.) It is no accident that all of communism's rhetorical vows revolve around Man (with a capital M) and his earthly happiness. At first glance it seems an ugly parallel: common traits in the thinking and way of life of today's West and today's East? But such is the logic of materialistic development.

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The interrelationship is such, moreover, that the current of materialism which is farthest to the left, and is hence the most consistent, always proves to be stronger, more attractive, and victorious. Humanism which has lost its Christian heritage cannot prevail in this competition. Thus during the past centuries and especially in recent decades, as the process became more acute, the alignment of forces was as follows: Liberalism was inevitably pushed aside by radicalism, radicalism had to surrender to socialism, and socialism could not stand up to communism. The communist regime in the East could endure and grow due to the enthusiastic support from an enormous number of Western intellectuals who (feeling the kinship!) refused to see communism's crimes, and when they no longer could do so, they tried to justify these crimes. The problem persists: In our Eastern countries, communism has suffered a complete ideological defeat; it is zero and less than zero. And yet Western intellectuals still look at it with considerable interest and empathy, and this is precisely what makes it so immensely difficult for the West to withstand the East. I am not examining the case of a disaster brought on by a world war and the changes which it would produce in society. But as long as we wake up every morning under a peaceful sun, we must lead an everyday life. Yet there is a disaster which is already very much with us. I am referring to the calamity of an autonomous, irreligious humanistic consciousness. It has made man the measure of all things on earth -- imperfect man, who is never free of pride, self-interest, envy, vanity, and dozens of other defects. We are now paying for the mistakes which were not properly appraised at the beginning of the journey. On the way from the Renaissance to our days we have enriched our experience, but we have lost the concept of a Supreme Complete Entity which used to restrain our passions and our irresponsibility. We have placed too much hope in politics and social reforms, only to find out that we were being deprived of our most precious possession: our spiritual life. It is trampled by the party mob in the East, by the commercial one in the West. This is the essence of the crisis: the split in the world is less terrifying than the similarity of the disease afflicting its main sections. If, as claimed by humanism, man were born only to be happy, he would not be born to die. Since his body is doomed to death, his task on earth evidently must be more spiritual: not a total engrossment in everyday life, not the search for the best ways to obtain material goods and then their carefree consumption. It has to be the fulfillment of a permanent, earnest duty so that one's life journey may become above all an experience of moral growth: to leave life a better human being than one started it. It is imperative to reappraise the scale of the usual human values; its present incorrectness is astounding. It is not possible that assessment of the President's performance should be reduced to the question of how much money one makes or

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to the availability of gasoline. Only by the voluntary nurturing in ourselves of freely accepted and serene self-restraint can mankind rise above the world stream of materialism. Today it would be retrogressive to hold on to the ossified formulas of the Enlightenment. Such social dogmatism leaves us helpless before the trials of our times. Even if we are spared destruction by war, life will have to change in order not to perish on its own. We cannot avoid reassessing the fundamental definitions of human life and society. Is it true that man is above everything? Is there no Superior Spirit above him? Is it right that man's life and society's activities should be ruled by material expansion above all? Is it permissible to promote such expansion to the detriment of our integral spiritual life? If the world has not approached its end, it has reached a major watershed in history, equal in importance to the turn from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance. It will demand from us a spiritual blaze; we shall have to rise to a new height of vision, to a new level of life, where our physical nature will not be cursed, as in the Middle Ages, but even more importantly, our spiritual being will not be trampled upon, as in the Modern Era. The ascension is similar to climbing onto the next anthropological stage. No one on earth has any other way left but -- upward.